Through a partnership with PolyCore Software, ThreadX can now be used on multiple cores as a mechanism to distribute an application’s workload and cleanly communicate between threads. As in the previous innovation examples, this isn’t an earthshaking development on its own merit. The innovation part here was recognizing a way to propagate ThreadX into new areas by a relatively simple interface change to assure MCAPI compliance – while making sure PolyCore’s Poly-Messenger works as advertised.
In each of these four examples – DDC-I, AdaCore/Mentor Graphics, Texas Instruments/VirtualLogix, and Express Logic/PolyCore – a software vendor took existing ideas such as Ada and safety-critical or multicore processors and added onto them. To be fair, it’s harder to innovate in hardware because the only variables are packaging (such as VPX) or the ICs themselves. Perhaps this is why more than ever before, VME vendors are turning to innovative software value-adds.
(Read full article by Chris Ciufo at VME and Critical Systems)